Director:
DOUG LIMAN
Born: JULY 24th 1965
Birthplace: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Education: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, BROWN UNIVERSITY, INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Liman is best known for his work with The Bourne Identity, first movie in the Bourne trilogy, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Fair Game was Liman's first film based on a historical event.
Liman is best known for his work with The Bourne Identity, first movie in the Bourne trilogy, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Fair Game was Liman's first film based on a historical event.
Interviewer:
How much do you feel that you had to change to make it work as a feature film?
Doug Liman:
We compressed certain things, we compressed the amount of time between certain events, and we never changed the order in which things happened. In some cases we skipped intermediate steps like, her name ultimately appeared in the newspaper because of a leak by Richard Armitage, but Armitaage got her name from Scooter Libby. So rather than do the detour, and do a whole Richard Armitage sub-plot, since the source directly linked him to Scooter Libby, we just left Armitage out of the movie. There were others… to me Armitage was a sideshow. Judith Miller was a sideshow.
There were all sorts of… the actual investigation, criminal investigation was a sideshow. I basically just decided to stick to the main ring and leave most of the sideshows out. So some people will look at the film and say, ‘…well, where’s this person?’ or ‘…where’s that person’, but they are sideshows.
Writers:
Jez and John-Henry Butterworth
JEZ:
Born: MARCH 1969
Born: MARCH 1969
Birthplace: LONDON, ENGLAND
JOHN-HENRY:
Born: 1976
Birthplace: LONDON, ENGLAND
In 2011, Jez and John-Henry received the Writers Guild of America, West's Award for their screenplay for Fair Game. This award is given to writers who epitomize the basis of constitutional rights and civil liberties in their work.
INTERVIEW WITH THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, WEST:
Interviewer:
You're obviously not bound by any journalistic responsibility, but...
John-Henry Butterworth:
There's responsibility to the people involved.
Jez Butterworth:
More than anything we’ve written before, we’re bound by what actually went on. But what really drew us both to it was meeting Joe and Valerie for the first time and realizing what an extraordinary experience they’d gone through as a couple. It felt like such a powerful story.
In terms of the politics, I didn’t know anything about American government. It was a tremendous amount of research that got us there. All of that stuff had to happen so that we could get at the relationship. Equally, I’m not a massively political person. I haven’t really found a reason to vote for the last 15 years. It’s not what inspired us.
Interviewer:
Jez Butterworth:
It’s just great. If you’ve got a couple where she has to keep everything secret, and he wants to make everything public – both because of a sense of duty. You’ve just got yourself a great dynamic. In the end, you feel there’s kind of a duality to this story, the great historical/political drama and then this great interpersonal relationship story.
Those are the stories you seek out, the ones that resonate on both of those levels; one that resonates on a personal level but also one, as far as I can tell, that everyone went through after 9/11.
Interviewer:
John-Henry Butterworth:
Yeah. Her book came to us in a fairly heavily redacted form after it had been through the clearing process at the CIA, and we actually didn’t get hold of it until quite late in the process. Lots of what we did was based on primary research; we interviewed lots of people, we went out to Washington and sat down with everybody involved that we could – congressmen, senators, people from both sides of the House and Joe and Valerie.
Born: 1976
Birthplace: LONDON, ENGLAND
In 2011, Jez and John-Henry received the Writers Guild of America, West's Award for their screenplay for Fair Game. This award is given to writers who epitomize the basis of constitutional rights and civil liberties in their work.
INTERVIEW WITH THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, WEST:
Interviewer:
You're obviously not bound by any journalistic responsibility, but...
John-Henry Butterworth:
There's responsibility to the people involved.
Jez Butterworth:
More than anything we’ve written before, we’re bound by what actually went on. But what really drew us both to it was meeting Joe and Valerie for the first time and realizing what an extraordinary experience they’d gone through as a couple. It felt like such a powerful story.
In terms of the politics, I didn’t know anything about American government. It was a tremendous amount of research that got us there. All of that stuff had to happen so that we could get at the relationship. Equally, I’m not a massively political person. I haven’t really found a reason to vote for the last 15 years. It’s not what inspired us.
Interviewer:
It was the story of this couple?
It’s just great. If you’ve got a couple where she has to keep everything secret, and he wants to make everything public – both because of a sense of duty. You’ve just got yourself a great dynamic. In the end, you feel there’s kind of a duality to this story, the great historical/political drama and then this great interpersonal relationship story.
Those are the stories you seek out, the ones that resonate on both of those levels; one that resonates on a personal level but also one, as far as I can tell, that everyone went through after 9/11.
Interviewer:
Did you utilize both books [The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson and Fair Game by Valerie Plame-Wilson]?
Yeah. Her book came to us in a fairly heavily redacted form after it had been through the clearing process at the CIA, and we actually didn’t get hold of it until quite late in the process. Lots of what we did was based on primary research; we interviewed lots of people, we went out to Washington and sat down with everybody involved that we could – congressmen, senators, people from both sides of the House and Joe and Valerie.
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